Aurel Bacs, a Star Returns to Watch Auctions

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Aurel Bacs, outside his office in Geneva.CreditPascal Mora for The New York Times

By Nazanin Lankarani

Sept. 29, 2015

Last November, when Phillips announced that it was reopening a watch department in association with the consulting firm Bacs & Russo, a tremor shook the watch market. By May, when the house held its inaugural two-day sale of vintage watches under Aurel Bacs’s hammer, shattering records and blowing away rivals, the market got a sense of just how powerful that seism would be.

And now, as the major houses prepare their annual November sales, many observers believe that the auction landscape has changed.

“I suspect many collectors will happily follow Aurel because he gives them what they need,” said Claude Sfeir, an international businessman and watch collector.

Those familiar with watch auctions know Mr. Bacs as the charismatic, passionate star auctioneer who ran the watch department at Christie’s for a decade. And he contributed greatly to the house’s success in raising its annual watch sales to a record $127 million in 2013 from $8 million in 2003.

Often switching with exceptional ease from French to English to German to Italian during auctions, Mr. Bacs, who was born in Zurich in 1971, caught the “watch bug” from his father, an amateur watch collector.

“I accompanied my father on family holidays scouring flea markets and antique shops for interesting mechanical watches,” Mr. Bacs said in a telephone interview from Geneva, where he has been based since 1995. “I watched with fascination as grown men discussed a small detail of a watch, compared references, tried to buy from each other, until I broke my own piggy bank in high school and started buying.”

Last year, Mr. Bacs and his wife, Livia Russo, herself a respected watch specialist, founded Bacs & Russo to advise watch clients. But they had honed their skills at the industry’s most prestigious houses. “We met at Sotheby’s, married at Phillips, and had our daughter while at Christie’s,” Mr. Bacs said.

According to Mr. Bacs, the battle for market share in recent years has shifted the focus of auction houses from service to volume, one reason he left Christie’s to go independent.

“Today, keywords in auction houses are volume, growth and online,” he said. “When you delegate your transactions to a computer, the collector who is looking to spend $50,000 or more will not buy. My ultimate satisfaction comes from doing things personally, meeting with clients and collectors face to face, touching and examining watches myself.”

In May, Phillips pulled all the stops to make its return to watch auctions nothing short of spectacular. Its watch department had closed in 2003 when Mr. Bacs, then its head of watches, left with Ms. Russo to join Christie’s. It began by selecting 60 vintage watches for a dedicated Rolex “Day-Date” sale, which reached $6.6 million. The next evening, 165 lots of varying brands sold for $25.1 million — for a total of $31.7 million.

In their May sales, Christie’s auctioned 293 lots, earning $16.4 million; Sotheby’s, 338 lots, $9.7 million, and Antiquorum, 504 lots, $6.7 million. The combined total was $32.8 million, just one million more than Phillips, which had sold the fewest watches.

“Despite what you may think, our strategy was not to make as much noise as possible,” Mr. Bacs said. “It was to sell the best watches we could find.

“We focused on rare, high-quality, mechanically interesting watches with good provenance and original components, all the things that make a desirable watch,” he continued. “Beyond that, I believe collectors want bespoke, personal, reliable service from someone they trust.”

To that product combination, Mr. Bacs had added an element of spectacle often lacking from the daylong, drawn-out watch auctions in Geneva. Those are often held in aging hotel ballrooms where bidders, crammed into tight quarters, check heavy catalogs that often are light on research before they are presented with a bewildering parade of watches.

To set itself apart, Phillips held two elaborately orchestrated evening sales in a vast tent erected on the grounds of La Réserve, a chic five-star hotel overlooking the lake and just outside Geneva. Catalog entries were written by respected industry experts. And the special display boxes designed to showcase some of the watches were given later to the winning bidders.

“Many watches went for 10 times their estimates, everything from Patek Philippe to Piaget,” said Mr. Sfeir, the businessman and collector, who attended and bid in both sales. “There were two wild evenings with nothing but the best watches at low estimates so everyone got into the bidding.”

Most observers, including Mr. Sfeir, credited the success of Phillips’s May sales to the talent of Bacs & Russo in obtaining the most desirable watches available for sale, and the flair and credentials that Mr. Bacs brought to the enterprise.

“Magic Aurel is back,” Gregory Pons, an industry commentator, wrote in his newsletter, Business Montres & Joaillerie.

Christie’s credited the sales numbers to the growing interest in pristine vintage watches. “The interest in unique, vintage and exceptional watches is still growing considerably, which is a great development, toward which we at Christie’s have contributed over the past 55 years,” said John Reardon, who was recently promoted to international head of watches at Christie’s in New York.

Mr. Reardon defined Christie’s strategy as inclusive.“The ‘boutique’ model at Phillips is different from the business model at Christie’s, where our goal is to provide more access to watch collectors across all geographies,” he said. “We do not wish to concentrate on a few top collectors, but welcome more people who love watches in more ways.”

In the meantime, Phillips, under the leadership of its new chief executive, Edward Dolman, himself a former chief executive of Christie’s, has been assembling a team of watch specialists, many from Christie’s.

Referring to Mr. Bacs as “a distinguished and globally recognized authority on watches,” Mr. Dolman wrote in an email: “Under his stewardship, our team of international watch specialists will lead the market with its uncompromising and academic approach to quality.”

This November, Mr. Bacs will hold the hammer in Geneva at Only Watch, a charity event that is held every other year. Since the auction to benefit research into Duchenne muscular dystrophy was founded in 2005, it has raised more than $10 million by auctioning one-of-a-kind timepieces donated by some 40 watch brands.

Antiquorum, which until this year had been Only Watch’s auctioneer, declined to comment on losing that privilege.

Whether Phillips’s success signals a shift is afoot in the watch auction market toward more curated sales remains to be seen. But, at least for now, none of the houses have expressed concern.

“We estimate the size of the watch auction market to be about $300 million, with plenty of room for more players,” said Mr. Reardon, the Christie’s executive. “The more, the merrier.”